Current growth in aerospace technology, including active development of spacecraft and space stations by both governments and industry worldwide, is extending air travel into space. All such airborne and spaceborne platforms, as well as many other types of vehicles and some types of stationary facilities such as power plants and oil platforms, are potentially subject to events or operator errors that can lead to catastrophic failures. Airborne and spaceborne equipment failures, collisions, and other catastrophic events endanger not only crew and passengers, but anyone in the path of falling debris.
It is desirable for both safety and economic reasons to fully understand the causes of a mishap so that corrective steps can be taken to predict and prevent future occurrences. Electronic recording has long been used to provide a record of critical events associated with catastrophic failures of aircraft. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,992,296 to Albrecht, issued in 1961, discloses a “Crash data recorder” that can be used in aircraft, but also is disclosed as applicable as an event recorder in other environments subject to catastrophic failures.
Flight data recorders and cockpit sound recorders, often called “black boxes” are routinely used in aircraft to provide a record of events leading up to a crash. These devices are designed to survive a crash or a breakup of the aircraft and are constructed to be strong, durable, and heat-resistant. As debris from a crash may be spread over a wide area, black boxes may also include automated radio frequency beacons or sound generators to assist investigators in locating the device following a crash. Current black boxes are generally heavy, commonly over 200 kilograms, expensive and relatively bulky devices, and despite being hardened to resist damage, remain subject to failure and to difficulty in being located by crash investigators.
These problems are amplified when considering catastrophic failure of a spacecraft or other spaceborne platform, for which flight recorder technology must withstand both hard vacuum and the rigors of atmospheric reentry, for example, from Earth's orbit. Further, the debris track created following failure of a spaceborne platform can extend over hundreds or even thousands of miles, such as was the case with the Space Shuttle Columbia crash in 2003. Improved flight data recorder technology is needed to help ensure that the causes of any such future accidents can be ascertained. In addition, for commercial spaceflight, where both cargo weight and available volume aboard a vehicle are limited and very expensive, current heavy and bulky flight recorder technology is suboptimal.